Shedding

     The shed build has begun! I wonder why we didn't start this when the weather was better - we have spend a few days out there in the rain and fog so far - but it is coming along fine. I have made a few calculation errors so far, but (I hope) have learned from them.
     We have made progress from this picture, as we have the end wall (to the east) built and almost all sided. Then we will raise it and start on the south wall... the tall one, as this shed will have a shed roof. The idea is to add a greenhouse to the south side, taking advantage of the shelter the shed will provide to the north.
     We have to add some more supports under the long wall (it is 8 feet by 16 feet) before we add any more weight to the floor ;-) and then I have to think about where the floor of the greenhouse will be - I have been planning for it to be on ground level, and right now the space under the shed floor (necessary for ventilation) will deliver some chilly north wind right into the greenhouse! I am hoping some interlocking styrofoam sheets will take care of the problem - and I suppose they could be removed when it gets hot, to provide additional ventilation.
     This has of course been taking up all our free time - in fact, between that and work I barely have time to cook. Must try to get some bread baked today, as we have been buying bread!

Making Progress in the Garden

    Tuesday night we fulfilled a long-term commitment to gather red osier dogwood (Cornus sericea - or C. stolonifera at the MacPhail Woods). We borrowed the Family Truck and drove to the Victoria Road after supper, and dug up 10 pieces from the ditch. We discovered that they are shallow-rooted, and the stems root readily and send up new shoots. We did get involved with some deeper-rooted bits but they were really hard to get out with just a shovel - an axe would have been handy. Since they were in the ditch, they have been bush-hogged countless times, so we weren't destroying or even damaging the stock - we even took from four different clumps.
       Back home, we put them in several places, mostly on the outside of the spruce and pine hedges so they will get lots of sun, which they like. I watered them the next morning, because by the time we finished planting it was dark! I discovered that we actually have nine plants, so perhaps we put two in one spot. I put two in the "front" garden, one in the shrub border and one beside the rose bed, and one in the line of shrubs under the maple in the "back" garden - the row of shrubs now consists of: 1. P.G. Hydrangea; 2. Cotinus coggyria (purple smoke-bush), 3. Potentilla (white),  4. Cornus sericea,  5. Chaenomeles japonica, and 6. some sort of Spirea, scrumped from the garden opposite Sears.

The Six Flowering Shrubs - not yet flowering, of course!

     Quite a list. It's a bit dark under there, and I have to keep the spruce hedge trimmed or it would overtake the shrubs, but it should make a good display - sometime.  If necessary, the maple can go - it's a Norway, anyway, and I consider it a weed tree. The number of saplings I pulled up in the flower beds this spring! Some of them two or three years old!!
     The Ring-around-the-Rosey bed is looking good - the Rugosa roses are putting out buds and the one in the middle is just fountaining out, over all. I am not sure if the last-year branches will flower, so I shall keep an eye on them and if they don't, I'll prune them out. They remind me a bit of raspberries at the moment, so I won't be surprised if they don't flower on last-year's canes.

Thornless! Mystery Rose

      I had decided that it might be Rosa Pleine de Grace last year, but in reading about it just now (got to love Google!) they talk about how thorny Pleine de Grace is, and mine has no thorns, none at all. Back to the drawing board, then.
      If anyone has any ideas I'd be happy to hear them. Blooms early, once, in clusters of single small blossoms, no scent that I've noticed, no thorns, vigorous, roots readily, blooms white with a hint of pink, turns more pink as it ages. Blossoms long-lasting. I once thought it might be Rosa Banksiae but their blossoms, though small, are doubles.
    The greenhouse has had a re-vamp, I de-skinned it and worked on the strapping, replacing four broken ones with new, and then re-taped the plastic and pulled it over again. There was one bad hole where a broken strap had poked through over the winter so I just taped it up. The plastic is quite opaque, so I don't expect it will last another year, but I am hoping it will do for this one. I hoiked out the strawberry plants I'd sunk into the vegetable garden bed late last fall and they are loving the warmth of the greenhouse at the moment. They all seem to have survived, and the ones which were on the West side of the bed were much warmer and so have started into growth - much more vigorously than the ones which had been on the East. I am sure they will all catch up eventually. The outdoor strawberries (the ones in the ground) are looking well. I have uncovered one bed and am leaving the other covered, to see if it makes a difference. There were three degrees of frost last night, so the uncovered ones are shivering this morning.

Frosted Lady's Mantle, April 19, 2012

    I am uncovering flower beds gradually, and discovered that the Alchimilla mollis was coming along grandly under quite a covering of brown leaves. It was quite big, so I dug it up (with quite an effort, it had made a considerable root-ball) and used the two-forks method to divide it into five pieces. I put one in the north-door bed, two in the South, and two beside the rock steps on the side lawn bed, pulling out two huge phlox to do so. I'm trying to keep smaller plants beside the steps. I should re-plant those phlox, because they are probably the nicer-coloured ones (not the dull light mauvey-pink ones I have in such abundance) - either white or the darker pink. I must check last year's photos to be sure. 
    I located some flower seeds at WalMart (though the garden centre isn't open yet) and bought some - another package of Nemophila Total Eclipse, some Morning Glories, and Cerinthe, which I saw on Beechgrove last year and loved. I started the seeds yesterday, and some are indoors in the wee greenhouse, while the rest are in the outdoor one. Fingers crossed - it's rather late to be starting them, they say, but I think 6-8 weeks until the last frost could be now.

More activity, of a scattered sort.

    I'm working too many hours this week to make a proper start on anything. I did get the greenhouse tidied up a bit, although it's not yet reinforced with new strapping. I moved the southern-most 'feet' inwards about 30 cm. and that makes it taller - and also gives me a bit more room on the edge of the strawberry and cranberry beds. I hope that it will shed snow more readily as well. Today the weather is not conducive to being out, so I am doing some domestic engineering this morning, as I have to go to work for 1 pm.
     I think the cherries - when they come - will go nicely where the blue tarp has been sitting since last year, discouraging the grass and weeds a bit. That is South of the greenhouse and East of the raspberries. I still have to figure out the fruit cage to keep the birds off the cherries. Surely I can find an old fishing net or two down at the wharf?
    I have been working on a little booklet of bead and sequin techniques, based on one of my favourite books from the library - Bead and Sequin Embroidery Stitches by Stanley Levy.

     I must see if I can get a used copy somewhere. I have borrowed it a lot! Anyway, I am trying out some of the techniques in my little booklet, to see if I can do them, firstly, and secondly, in case I can't find the book, I shall have a record of the techniques. Luckily, Fabricville has been going out of beads at the same time, so they have been really cheap. Now I have many colours of flat sequins and quite a few of the cupped ones - they didn't have many of those. Of course I already have lots of beads.

The bathroom continues, sluggishly. I painted the closet inside - two coats yesterday alone - because it's 90 cm. deep and I don't think it will be much fun to paint once the frame and the doors are on. I cut some of the face frame, it looks good, but I think I need a longer drill-bit - it needs to go through the 1 x 3 edgewise, and into the cross pieces a bit. I have decking screws long enough to fasten them together once the drilling is done.
     In any case, it is coming up to completion (if only I could get some time at it) and then it's on to the cradle for the tub, which is a bit terrifying at the moment but which will turn out to be possible once I get started on it. The tub has been sitting in the living-room since I started on the closet. It looks a bit Bohemian in there at the moment, I have to say.

More of the Same...

The weather continues good, and the kitchen is coming on at a snail's pace - we did rent a tile saw and cut all of the granite tile for the countertop and backsplash, on Saturday. Carpenter is supposed to be in to fit the doors - and more importantly, cut the hole for the sink so we can get on with gluing down the tiles - today.
In the interim I've done a bit of work on the plaster, as there have been electrical plugs relocated, some wall damage was done removing the old cabinets, and there's more wall showing than there was before. Because this was a schoolhouse, the original carpenters didn't seam-fill the gyproc at the bottom of the walls, as they were originally covered by Douglas-fir wainscotting. So that was for me to do.
I hope the plastering is finished now, so I can sand and then paint up to the new cabinets with the dark green wall colour.

On Sunday I actually got out into the garden, briefly - I dug a few of the leeks, and then sank the strawberries - in their pots - into the former leek bed, and covered them with a layer of hay. The idea, or the pious hope, I suppose, is that they will survive the winter, and then I can dig them up and put them in the greenhouse in the early spring, and with luck have an earlier crop of strawberries. The strawberries which are in the ground to the south of the greenhouse also got a cover of hay. I suppose I can count them as my control group.

We shored up the greenhouse with a couple of posts - it got snow on it a couple of weeks ago, and it was heavy and collapsed a couple of the hoops. No trouble to pop them back up, and the snow slid off, but the weight was hard on the strapping we used to hold the piping rigid. It's the way the snow fell, I think - it came straight down and built up (we had almost 20 cm.!) and then it got warm so it melted and increased in weight (is that physically possible? Does it absorb moisture from the air? It Feels like it does, anyway) and the roof buckled. It's popped up again, and I have wrapped the roof in a big green tarp, and tied it down to concrete blocks front and back. There hasn't been any popping of the plastic clips or any blow-out of the ends since that happened. It just may be winterized at last.

The solar is working well when it is sunny. I think I've probably had a couple of solar showers now. We did cut down the Theves poplar just beside the house, also on the weekend. It wasn't interfering much with solar gain at the moment, but it had to go - the leaves in summer would have been a disaster! I'm hoping the white oak will be able to stay - it has been pollarded and so far it looks like it won't shade the panels. I've put the Christmas lights on it to make it feel a bit better.

Too busy to post...

 The greenhouse, tidied up. Needs a few more shelves, and doors at both ends, I think, to get the breeze through. So, currently, the things in there are enjoying shelter but not exactly warm greenhouse conditions.
I have planted all the tomatoes out in the garden (except the 6 I plan to keep indoors, 2 Sweet Million, and 4 Early Girl). I need a couple of tomato cages and they will all be ready for the growing season. I also put in the ground cherries and the rhubarb in the lasagne bed yesterday, and planted carrots, more lettuce and spinach, and a short row of beets. I'm really getting into this succession planting lark.
I managed to get most of the plants from Veseys $2 sale, which had been soaking overnight, potted up, Now to wait until they are a bit bigger before putting them out in the garden beds.  Some of them looked quite healthy - and others are definite long shots.
We dug a trench in the western garden and put in the willow twigs - we have been keeping them in water, and the ones with their heads covered have done best. However, they apparently root readily anywhere so we are hopeful.

Must go arrange dinner, as we are at Small Halls tonight! Cynthia MacLeod, Tony McManus, and Nuala Kennedy.

Long weekend Gardening and Dancing

Actually there was more dancing than gardening, though we did get out on Monday afternoon. Fred did almost all of the lawn (skipped the Secret Garden, as it's mostly invisible and quite shady, so not much grass growing there). I planted a little and weeded a little and worked on the greenhouse - it needs more plastic but, despite some wind it managed to stay put while I taped it up. It isn't pretty but I think it will do the job.
The weather was not bad - as far as rainfall went - for the long weekend, but it was really chilly right up until yesterday, when the wind finally shifted. We are having fitful rain today but at least it's warmer. This is not what the farmers are looking for - they want warm and dry and windy for a week, or the crops can't go in. I keep starting seeds indoors as I don't know when I'll be able to get things going outdoors. Must look for more big pots for potatoes. They are still not showing above ground, by the way - I think they need heat as well. I'll get another roll of poly today and get the greenhouse closed in so they can warm up a little.
We had quite a bit of music and dance for the weekend: Saturday afternoon and Saturday night, Sunday at the Triangle, and Sunday night at ours. Our summer neighbours returned from California on Sunday too, so they dropped in for a while! It was great times.

Chilly as a Witch's...

Not much growing happening here as the temperatures are still in the single digits. I haven't been able to finish my greenhouse because the plastic sheeting is too wet to tape. We've had upwards of 20 mm of rain every day for days. No chance of a drought this spring. Farmers are starting to worry about getting on the land, and the winds have been worrying for lobster fishers, especially those who have to try to get out of silted-up harbours on the North Shore. Oh well, I'm sure this, too, shall pass.
Talking to Anne about plants - she has been totally converted to the lasagne bed concept, so I'm going to try it too (as soon as I can get outdoors again!!). I must collect newspapers, and various kinds of compostables (I have a whole front-yard-full of leaves and pine needles! I just have to drag them BACK from the compost heap!)
I've been studying plants for the west side of the house (I'm thinking lasagne beds along the foundation, with plants which don't get too tall) and it turns out I have quite a few already. It'll be a place for the glut of things like phlox and feverfew too.
I still want to plant shrubs - I saw hydrangeas at Jewells today, marked down from 12.99 to 6.99. Tempting!
So, I have not been successful in "Rounding Up" the dock weeds and ribbon grass - it didn't make the slightest difference - I'd just done a small sample to see how things went - and things didn't go. This being a cold-blooded killer is tougher that you'd think.

Royal Weddings and Garden Plans

We watched a bit of the RW this morning - it was very conveniently timed for those of us on the East Coast of North America. Started about 6 and left for work at 8:30. Took the car in to WalMart - again - and - again - their tire-inflater machine isn't working, so I can't get the tires changed. They are taking up a lot of room in the trunk of the car, I have to say. I want to get potting soil today and can't think where I'm going to put it!! I left the car there for an oil change and walked to work - took exactly 47 minutes. I think I'll cab back, though!
I've been looking at do-it-yourself greenhouses on the 'net. I think my reading tent with perhaps a PVC pipe roof will be fine. They seem to be using woven plastic greenhouse fabric rather than banking poly, which is what I was planning to use. Seems like it would be much more expensive. And, they seem to expect them to survive winter outdoors! I wasn't planning on that at all.
I'm planning to get some early variety potato sets today and start them in pots - finally a use for all of those big black plastic pots I get with roses and have never had the heart to throw out. I only hope that they are big enough. I'm going to do the layering thing that they do on The Beechgrove Garden. Much easier to hill up, and I can keep them in the greenhouse for a while before putting them outdoors. I'd also like to put the wee strawberry plants in the greenhouse too - they are in the tiny wheelie one on the deck today but they just aren't doing much growing yet. I think I'll keep them in pots too - there was a gardener who had set up a series of steps, with pots for strawberries - very east to net against the birds, etc. Compact and pest-free.